By the time I reached my floor, I was too pooped to poop. Most of my classmates were milling about in the hall, chatting with one another, except for Summer, Lunar, and Prim.
“Ah! Our last crippled comrade has returned!” Red said as he saw me.
Hannah, who was sitting, gave me a weak smile. “Hey, Turnip. How are you feeling?”
“Like I had just run up Mount Everest without a break,” I answered as I flopped down on the floor in front of the stairs. “How are you feeling?”
“Like a semi truck ran over me repeatedly, so about the same as you and Bright,” Hannah replied. “Can’t manage the magic to turn the handle on my door.”
“Ah feel like I just spent three weeks tendin’ all the trees on mah family farm without a break or help,” Bright said, who was lying on the floor beside Hannah.
“At least you didn’t hurt anypony with that weight you were levitating,” Onyx said. “I’ve seen weights thrown before, but never through the wall, the next wall, and the next wall.”
“Yes, if Professor Dawn had not reacted with such a vigorous shield, you would have likely decapitated her. An impressive display by the professor in the wake of a surprise attack,” Red said.
“Ah didn’t mean to,” Bright said wearily. “Ah was already sleepin’ like a babe by the time that weight was through the first wall.”
Rocky laughed. “Only pony I’ve ever seen chuck a weight like that is my granny, but I don’t think Professor Dawn would have been able to block something she chucked.”
“I turned the sidewalk under my feet to crystal,” Hannah said mirthlessly. “I actually made thaumically active material, and I didn’t even know what I did or get to keep it.”
“Oh..what did I do?” I asked, wondering about the result of my surge.
“Stiffened up like a board,” Twilight answered. “Or more like a rock. It was a good thing because you were the only one that Summer’s flames hit, and you should have been burned to a crisp, but whatever you did protected you from that.”
I blinked. I had heard some powerful earth ponies could harden their bodies to shrug off just about any attack. There was a super powerful earth pony in Mexico called El Capitan, who I had heard adults gossiping about—earth ponies tending crops loved to gossip. He was one of those scarily powerful ponies, only a step or so down from alicorns, and he had crossed the US border to track some cartel guys he had been hunting. Usually, the USA had no problem with people beating up cartel members, but he had practically leveled a city block of El Paso fighting with them. The army had to be called to force him back across the border. While they were doing it, he took a direct blast from tank artillery to the face, then quickly demolished the tank with his hooves without showing a sign beyond being dirty that a piece of heavy artillery had hit him; he didn’t even work up a sweat doing it. I guess that kind of protection is what I did, only it took every reserve I had and then some to manage a fraction of that for a few seconds.
I looked at the door at the end of the hall. “How’s Summer doing?”
Hannah gave the door a sad look. “She’s recovering faster than us when it comes to the magic. Her levitation is already working again, but she refuses to come out from under her bed covers and won’t let anyone but me in the room. She let Bright in for a minute to see that he was okay. She’s been crying. She’ll probably want to see you’re okay. She thought she hurt you.”
“You are all taking your exhaustion better than my dear twin sister,” Red said with a dirty look at his room. “She spent an hour or more whining incessantly about how sore she was from gym class and how she hadn’t been allowed to finish her pathetic physical performance and went straight to bed after our last class. She must have tired herself out from all her drama because she napped for a few hours while events were going on with the rest of you, but now she’s gone back to crying about how sore she is and her headache—which is almost certainly a result of her excessive crying. It is downright embarrassing to have a pony of noble birth carry on in such a manner.”
“Lunar is in bed already. He said he didn’t want to fall asleep in class again tomorrow,” Twilight said after glancing at his room.
“At least Headmaster’s pain pills seem to be working. My headache is already gone,” I said. I looked at Hannah and Bright. “Did he tell the two of you that he’s actually a doctor?”
“Well, he said he was the school nurse,” Hannah said.
“And dishwasher,” Bright added in.
“Clearly a man of many hats,” Red said.
I weakly shook my head. “I mean, he says that being a medical doctor is his actual trade and that he was coerced into taking the job of Headmaster.”
“Ah didn’t hear that from him. He’d just said he didn’t mind washin’ dishes, and he’d always been the one to wash dishes after dinner for his family growin’ up,” Bright said.
That suggested a humble beginning but didn’t provide much else. Oh well.
As I forced myself to stand up, I decided to follow through with my decision to take note of my classmate’s cutie marks. Onyx and Rocky were too far down the hall for me to get a good look. Red’s was a white heart with a red stripe that bisected it straight down the middle. Hannah’s was a stack of coins. Bright’s was a pear with an apple in the center. Twilight’s was a star surrounded by little red hearts.
“I want to get to bed soon, but I want to check on Summer first,” I announced.
“I think we all want to get to bed. We were just waiting to see if you got back alright,” Twilight said. “I’m going to turn in for the night.”
Bright yawned and forced himself to his hooves. “Ah, as well. See ya in a minute or so, roomie.”
“I shall be retiring for the night, too,” Red said as he headed towards his room.
“Sleep tight!” Rocky said.
“Don’t let the parasprites bite!” Onyx declared right after. The two of them promptly headed into their room.
Hannah stood up. “I’ll walk with you. I need Summer to let me into the room anyway; otherwise, I’m sleeping in the hall.”
It wasn’t fun walking to the end of the hall, and I expected walking back would be equally unpleasant. It seemed like walking was even more miserable now after walking to the dorm. Perhaps climbing the stairs had just taken that much energy out of me. Still, I made it to the end of the hall with Hannah and waited as she knocked on the door.
“Summer? It’s me. Can you unlock the door?” Hannah asked. “Turnip’s here with me.”
There was a click, which I assumed was the door being unlocked. It happened quickly, which meant Summer was either right next to the door or her magic was already working with enough skill that she could turn the lock without much effort.
We entered the room, and it was confirmed that Summer hadn’t left her bed and was entirely cocooned by her covers. Hannah promptly headed to her own bed and slowly climbed into it.
“Hi, Summer. You’ll be happy to know that Headmaster remembers your name,” I said as I made my way next to her bed.
“He needs to know my name to kick me out of school,” Summer said dejectedly.
“It isn’t that—”
Summer sat up quickly and looked at me with big eyes. “It isn’t that bad? Is that what you are going to say? I damaged part of the park. I went super nirik in public. I almost hurt you. That’s bad, really bad!”
I shook my head. “It was a surge caused by outside factors we couldn’t control. It wasn’t your fault, any more than it was Hannah’s fault she ruined that section of the road by turning it into crystal. Heck, Bright nearly killed a professor.”
She frowned. “So maybe we’ll all get kicked out of school. That feels worse.”
“Hey! Headmaster might be a bit…antisocial…but he did seem to legitimately care about whether we were all okay,” I protested. “He didn’t even mention the damage. He just wanted to make sure we got to rest. He seemed to blame it on whoever that colt was that surged, at least as far as I could tell.”
“I was thinking it might be a sign of something special,” Hannah said from where she was lying in bed. “I mean, it only seemed to impact us, and we are all friends. Didn’t the Element Bearers all get their cutie marks on the same day as Rainbow Dash doing her first sonic rainboom? Maybe we could all be like the future Element Bearers? That has to impress Headmaster, and there's got to be some way to monetize that.”
Summer frowned at Hannah. “I don’t think so. Aren’t there supposed to be six elements? There's four of us.”
Hannah flipped her tail. “Well, that colt that did the rainboom would make five, and that just leaves one friend we haven’t met yet. Five of the Element Bearers knew each other for years before they met Twilight Sparkle. I’m sure we’ll meet our sixth friend eventually.”
It was a fun theory, but I wasn’t sure it worked. “You might make an interesting generosity since you offered to buy me that comic; Bright is an Apple, so maybe he’s honesty, and Summer has all kinds of Fluttershy vibes, but what the heck would I be?”
“I don’t know, maybe loyalty?” Hannah suggested. “You don’t seem the laughter type, and magic doesn’t work either, so loyalty it is.”
“Or maybe Bright is loyalty, and you are honesty,” Summer suggested, seeming intrigued by the idea, intrigued enough to finally perk up her ears. “We shouldn’t stereotype ponies based on backgrounds. There’s no reason to assume Bright is honesty automatically.”
I wasn’t sure I would make a good loyalty or honesty, so I still wasn’t sold on the idea, but I could still run with the suggestion since it did seem to improve Summer’s mood. “Well, by that token, we shouldn’t assume you are kindness. You are the most magical of us. You could be magic. Speaking of magic, you haven’t shown me your new mark yet?”
Hannah sat up in her bed. “New mark? I didn’t hear anything about a new mark. I didn’t think kirin got marks.”
Summer sighed, lit her antler, and her bed covers unwrapped from around her so we could see her flank. Clear as day, standing in strong contrast to her normal coloring, was a picture of what looked like a blue campfire.
“Blue flame,” Summer said, sounding ashamed. “My fire when I surged wasn’t normal; it was blue. I got my mark for my flame.”
That explained why she wasn't excited about her mark. Going nirik and burning things was what she least wanted to do or be associated with.
“You weren’t angry,” I stated as it occurred to me. “You burned without getting angry. Do kirin newborns do that when they surge?”
She shook her head. “Just when they get angry during a surge, which happens often. The rest of the time, it is many of the same things unicorns do during surges. We tend to keep our newborns in caves until the surging stops so they can’t burn anything down when they have a temper tantrum.”
“You keep your foals in caves?!” Hannah asked in disbelief.
Summer shrugged. “They’re nice caves, and we’re fully dragons in addition to being fully ponies, so they are technically dragon whelps and foals. I'm technically a whelp. Big dragons keep their hatchlings in caves. So it isn’t a big deal we do since we’re dragons. There have been a few kirin who wanted to get in touch with their dragon roots that left to go to the dragon lands. The big dragons laugh at us and call us pixie dragons, but they let us stay with them because they find us cute. I heard a few kirins married big dragons, and at least one had an egg clutch with a big dragon.”
Hannah frowned. “Won’t the big dragons start inheriting things from ponies if that happens?”
“Some, I guess,” Summer said with another shrug, unconcerned about the long-term implications of the giant fire-breathing dragons getting an influx of pony DNA. She seemed much more worried about being associated with fire.
“Well, since you are fully pony and fully dragon, you shouldn’t be ashamed of your fire. Fire is just a natural part of being a dragon. It’s part of you,” I stated firmly.
“A destructive part,” Summer countered.
“And my strength can’t be destructive?” I asked. “I sure that rainboom could have done some damage—since it made us surge, and some of us did damage as a result, it definitely did damage, at least indirectly. It’s all how you use what you have. Your fire is different. It came without you getting angry and was a different color. That’s something special. Maybe that’s something that could impress Headmaster. Impressing Headmaster is what we need to do to advance to the next year.”
“Me summoning fire while not being angry isn’t a big deal. We kirin can summon our fire without getting angry; it isn’t hard. We just can’t help but summon it when we do get angry,” Summer said as she lifted a hoof, and a small red flame appeared on it before winking out. “Still, I guess you are right that blue flames are different, and other stuff can be just as destructive. I’m just scared, and I don’t even know why they were blue or how I made them blue. They’ve never been blue.”
“Maybe one of the professors can help you figure it out,” Hannah suggested. “But, can we do this tomorrow? My head still hurts, and I want to sleep.”
“Yeah, tomorrow sounds like a good idea. Talking to a professor can’t use that much energy,” I said. “Maybe, Professor Glitter Drops? Isn’t she the one that does the elemental magic? Fire is elemental, right?”
“Yeah, that sounds good,” Summer agreed, still not sounding enthusiastic.
I stood back up. “I’ll walk with you over there tomorrow. By the way, your mom said that she is very proud of you and very proud you got a cutie mark. I think you should make some time for her. I think it hurts her feelings that you avoid her. She knows she doesn’t have answers for you, but she’s got love. There’s nothing wrong with having your mom tell you you’re special.”
Summer sighed. “Every parent tells their kid they are special. She’s just so pushy with it. It gets to be so much.”
I looked down to the floor. “Not every parent tells their kids they are special. You should value it.”
Hannah sat up again. “Turnip, is there something going on with you and your parents?”
I sighed and shook my head. “They’re on Earth, and I’m here, and it can stay that way. Summer should be happy to have supportive parents.”
“Oh, Turnip…I’m sorry,” Hannah said.
I headed to the door. “Talk to your mom, Summer. She loves you.”